That’s what you actually get some Trudeau trolls nattering about online: Andrew Scheer’s dimples.

Seriously.

For some reason beyond the understanding of sane people, the Trudeaupian types think that the Conservative leader’s dimples disqualify him as a candidate for Prime Minister. They go on about it all the time.

The same criticism used to be made about Bill Clinton. The Democratic president’s many Republican antagonists would say that Clinton’s ever-present grin was unsettling. They would say that Clinton seems to be smiling when, you know, he shouldn’t be.

In recent months, the upward tilt of Andrew Scheer’s lips haven’t been as evident. We don’t know if he’s received advice to look less happy, or if he is simply distressed by the state of Confederation. Either way, Andrew Scheer is not smirking nearly as much as he used to.

This tendency of some people to attack politicians for something over which they have no control – to wit, their physical appearance – is nothing really new.

Haters on the left attacked Doug Ford for his weight, just as they did with his deceased brother, Toronto Mayor Rob. Kathleen Wynne was mocked for resembling the Church Lady on Saturday Night Live.

And, as Wynne would certainly know, female politicians are regularly attacked – viciously, ceaselessly, unfairly – for their appearance: their hairstyle, their style of dress, their relative attractiveness. All the time.

Such attacks can change the course of political history. The infamous 1993 Conservative Party ad that pointed out the facial paralysis of my former boss, Jean Chretien, is the most infamous example. On the night those ads hit the airwaves in the midst of the 1993 federal election campaign, this writer was running Chretien’s war room at his Ottawa headquarters.

We did not know those attack ads were coming, and we were shocked when they did. Unidentified voices could be heard asking if the Liberal leader “looked like a Prime Minister.“

My boss had been waiting his whole life for that attack. He responded a few hours later, at a campaign stop in New Brunswick. He pointed out that “this was the face” that God gave him, and – unlike Tories, he said – “I don’t speak out of both sides of my mouth.“

Boom. Tories reduced to two seats.

In political back rooms, however, a great deal of time is still devoted to discussing and debating the physiology of political candidates. Example: prior to this writer arriving in British Columbia in 1996 to assist the BC Liberal campaign, some nameless genius strategist decided to stick BC liberal leader Gordon Campbell in a plaid shirt, so he would look a little more proletarian, and a little less house street.

The gambit backfired dramatically. Campbell was ridiculed for trying to be something that he was not.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau presents a political anomaly. Trudeau, like Gordon Campbell, is a handsome fellow. Even Rolling Stone gushed in a cover story that Trudeau and his family are “photogenic” and “glamorous.”

In Canada, the politicians who tend to succeed are unlike Trudeau. They are the ones who possess the hockey-rink-and-Timmmies Everyman look. Ralph Klein, Rene Levesque, Mel Lastman, Jean Chretien and Rob Ford were frequently attacked by the elites for being dishevelled or, at least, somewhat less than a Hollywood matinee idol.

But voters, clearly, loved them for it. Because, in the main, not too many voters resemble Hollywood matinee idols either.

If they’ve gotten this far, serious students of policy will be offended by all this talk about physical appearance.

They’re right. We shouldn’t make important decisions based on looks.

But, not long after he lost the aforementioned 1996 BC election, Gordon Campbell ruefully remarked to this writer: “It’s 70 per cent how you look, 20 per cent how you say it, and only 10 per cent what you say.”

59 Comments

Good column, although I assume “house street” was supposed to be “Howe Street”.

(Incidentally, having worked in corporate Vancouver for years, I always wondered why Howe Street became the equivalent of Bay Street – i.e. a metonym for the financial district. Pretty much all the major banks, corporate head offices, law firms, etc were along either Georgia or Burrard.)

Those dimples are not going to make the dent, not the crater you image. Yes, it’s weak sauce to focus On a politicians face (we make those judgements subconsciously as the somewhat advanced apes that we are); symmetry is a factor… but Trudeau is going to get a majority in October. it could be this wine I’m drinking it could be the swinging pendulum. But south of the border; the elephant in the room is that Joe Biden is an intellectual light weight, you can still get on the Buttiegeg bandwagon if you want. Biden actually apologized without providing info on how he would do better. Or I was too bored to follow his full speech. Let’s face it; Buttiegeg is the nuke needed to take down the Trunp machine. Boot a Judge needs talented spin doctors to attack the talking pumpkin. Joe Biden is toast. We need Warren, we f@&$ing need you!!!!

Agreed. The difference is the base of the GOP is not generally interested in totalitarian statements.

They want tax cuts, debt reduction, secure borders etc. And that leaves a lot of room to manuver.

Compare that to:

Medicare for all – including illegal immigrants,
Free Post secondary education
Unlimited abortion rights – right up to the moment of birth
and a whole long list of black and white positions that whoever wins will have the impossible task of walking them back.

I think this even is qualitatively different than McGovern where the party will tear itself apart if it ever tries to walk these declarations back – the far left will bolt. If my memory of my readings about the Dem platform in ’72 they just weren’t that black and white on issues.

I agree there are obvious parallels to 1972 and McGovern, and that should make any Democrat nervous.

However, there are also some important differences from 1972 (which I hate to admit I’m old enough to remember). For example, Trump’s net negative ratings are way way higher than Nixon’s ever were. Nixon was good at playing to the base AND the centre. Trump is very small-tent by comparison, and it goes to his narcissistic personality that he gravitates to the alt-right base because of the unqualified adoration and narcissistic supply that they give him. Those rallies are a perfect example. As one Republican strategist put it, those rallies are empty comfort food for Trump and his supporters.

The other thing is that the “enthusiasm” and “determination to vote the other guy out” numbers are very good for the Democrats, and it looks like (unlike 1972) those may well hold up, almost no matter who the Democratic candidate is. And that is also a significant difference from 2016, when a lot of Democrats (e.g., disaffected Bernie fans) stayed home on voting day.

The other general problem is the tendency of Trump and his most rabid supporters to deny and dismiss how unpopular he is and to overestimate how popular he is (e.g., dismissing any poll that they don’t like). That’s no way to go into battle, i.e., underestimating the strength of your opposition.

I’m not predicting a Trump loss, but I think Trump has some serious problems.

Even though McGovern got tagged as the candidate of “Abortion, Amnesty and Acid” in 1972, the 1972 Democratic platform was not particularly radical by today’s standards.

It was pretty much silent on abortion (only amorphous support for “family planning”), said nothing about prison reform or decriminalization of drugs, and had a very very modest health care proposal which proposed to cover serious injuries only while rejecting single-payer. It was pro-coal and pro-nuclear power. They proposed simplifying the tax system rather than creating new taxes.

It’s a sign of how moderate it was, even by the standards of the day, that a number things it proposed were later implemented by Republican presidents: indexing Social Security to inflation, more money for low-income schools, Medicare drug benefits.

The fact that the 1972 platform was considered so “out there” at the time is pretty weird when you consider how much further to the right the American political spectrum (and the Overton window) have shifted since the 70s.

Gord, you make an interesting point there. I think you have to look at the Big Elephant in 1972 (which really has no equivalent today), and that’s the Vietnam War. McGovern was unequivocally against the war and in favour of immediate pullout.

Nixon, being the weasel he was, played it brilliantly. He managed to retain the redneck, middle America pro-war people while peeling off moderates claiming that pulling out would be rash and foolish. Then he and Kissinger pulled their little surprise out of their hat.

But beyond specifics, the Vietnam War had morphed into a classic culture war issue. And McGovern was identified by a lot of Archie Bunker Joe Six Pack middle Americans as being the candidate of the hippies and the flag burners.

It was pure inside baseball team to make the comment that “ I don’t speak on both sides of my mouth.” Yes a politician by definition must promise one thing to one cluster and another thing to another amorphous clump of human preference. Of course, Trudeau would have said “physician appearances do not Matter” or something flat an universally Daft and self evidently correct. Plaid shirts don’t matter much; We imagine that JC’s joke was in fact a factor in the election but to be honest there were a lot of variables at play in determine that election outcome: 2
Seats for the PC; Joe Clarke’s return etc. It was desperation. It was crass. Problem is I can’t prove that there were so many other factors and you can’t prove that it was that single shite John Tory-led ad campaign LEAK that destroyed the PC majority.

That’s interesting you mention Quebec corruption. I’ve always thought that one of the most underreported things from that era was the fact that a ridiculously high number of the examples of corruption trotted out by Stevie Cameron in her book Behind Closed Doors emanated from Quebec. As I recall, it was like Maritimes in second place, rest of Canada distant third. Doubly remarkable when you think about our population distribution.

There are many things a politician can do to alter her or his physical appearance. Hair colour and makeup, for example. It’s called packaging. Our current PM, should he lose his position in the next general election, could be a consultant and advise politicians in how to manipulate public opinion in this way. Hint: It helps to have an official photographer paid for with public funds.

Harper drove Liberal supporters nuts because he was usually the smartest guy in the room. Smart people can only come from at least several of Upper Canada College, the Annex, U of T, Power Corp, Westmount, U de Laval, Outremont or McGill.

If you look at all the qualities and qualifications (I’ll list them at the end) that Trudeau had to be leader and PM, I think they have remained intact. The reasons he won in 2015 are still equally valid today.

He did, didn’t he? But one sentence from Brian Mulroney in a debate finished him (“You had a CHOICE, Sir!”). Joe Clark was done in by his honesty over his intention to impose a 10 cent (?) gas tax, and Robert Stanfield fumbled a football. Oh, Canada…

This says almost everything, and WK, we’re this far out already but I’m calling it: it’s going to be at least a Liberal minority gov’t. Scheer will not win even a minority of seats. He played this wrong (and he is wrong), he should’ve just agreed it was a good idea but no he couldn’t, and it’s tipped enough people into the “meh not Conservative yet” column.

Does this bill mean that toddlers claiming to be the opposite gender can’t be coaxed by a psychologist to resolve back to the child’s biological gender – which is exactly what eventually happens in the vast majority of such cases? Would parents be BREAKING THE LAW if they did such a thing?

I suspect that’s why Scheer is hesitant on this issue and only far-left extremists who were never voting Conservative in the first place could blame him for his hesitation.

“It’s the start of a polling trend and it may hold, provided that progressives actually vote.”

Yes, and way, WAY too early to make any sort of prediction.

The VA Norman incident isn’t over yet (the public doesn’t have ‘closure’ as far as what happened and why, as you yourself have pointed out), climate vs pipelines is still in play, JWR and JP may have more to say, groping could rear it’s ugly head again, international embarrassments and possible corruption, ethics violations, repeated displays of poor judgement, etc, etc…all of these will be rehashed at some point.

But the big one, for me, is what happens if China threatens to execute one or both of their hostages?

My predictions aren’t cast in stone. They are always made in the moment. Hence me going from a CPC majority to an election that was Scheer’s to lose, to a likely Libersl turn-around. Notice I didn’t yet say Liberal government.

As for our four nationals, I suspect at least one is CSIS, while another is a political prisoner. The other two are alleged drug traffickers — and you know what that means.

It’s been noted by a number of smart people that the problem the Tories have is that for them, it’s majority government or bust. Which is a bit of a tall order.

The Liberals have no such problem. If it’s a minority, they’re all but certain to be propped up by some sort of Dipper/Green/BQ collective.

Plus even at 5% or whatever in the polls, Mad Max’s alt-right crusaders may well peel enough right-wing votes from the Tories to do some damage in tight races. My money’s on a Liberal minority or squeaker majority.

I don’t know. Remember the wise comment Darwin put up a while back: both the NDP and the LPC at some point propped up Harper but at least the NDP’s support was results-oriented. Translation: they actually got substantial funding in exchange for their support. So, anything can happen. IF Scheer can think out of the box and horse-trade, he could still form a minority under such circumstances.

Not outside the realm of possibility, but green/climate issues are a big priority for Green and Dipper voters, I think more so than ever. Scheer and the CPC are seen by the Green and Dippet faithful as climate villains. That’s one reason I see their propping up a Tory minority government as unlikely this time.